Not the most satisfying, accurate, or entertaining entrée to climate change.
“Chicken Little” for the environmentally aware.
When Loony Little feels a drop of water hit the top of her head, she wails, “The polar ice cap is melting! I must go tell the Polar Bear Queen!” She meets a dovekie, a puffin, and an arctic hare along the way, several commenting about the effect: “the sea will rise, and my den might flood!” But when the group meets Sealy Sally, they rethink meeting the Polar Bear Queen, who recently ate Sealy Sally’s cousin. Foxy Loxy offers to safely escort them, but Loony Little puts paid to his nefarious plan when she stumbles across the sign pointing to his den. A well-aimed piece of ice convinces Foxy Loxy the group is right, and he takes the news to the Polar Bear Queen…who promptly solves a more immediately pressing need than a melting ice cap. The four friends head off across the ice dolefully wondering what they can do. “It’s up to us to find out,” says Loony Little. “All of us.” Backmatter explains climate change and the greenhouse effect, gives some ideas for ways kids can help—though many are either educational/research-based or work-intensive (grow a garden, plant trees)—and provides additional info about each of the animals. The textured paintings don’t always match this information, often showing the loon on solid surfaces standing upright as a goose would, which is physically impossible.
Not the most satisfying, accurate, or entertaining entrée to climate change. (resources) (Picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62354-117-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
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